


3005/Sober

by rayfelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3302174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think it’s just another fling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3005/Sober

**Author's Note:**

> I gave this to my friend for her to beta read it. She gave it back to me with a two page review that left me in tears.  
> No on has ever told me something like that about my writing.

You think it’s just another _fling_. Something to pass the time with and make it hurt less – cute things always make the bruises and wounds hurt less, you’ve read that somewhere. It was written in blurry, black lines under a picture of a pretty boy covered in pink band-aids and wearing just an oversized sweater. Or maybe the pretty boy, all beaten up and alone, used to be you. Long ago, so long ago that it now seems like just some picture on the internet or old billboards scattered along the highway.

His hand is warm in yours. That’s all that matters, really. Or maybe you’re just too cold, like the dead lined up in front of the furnace. You’re not sure anymore. Your mind’s a dark place you don’t want to explore any further tonight. Too much alcohol and no map to lead you through the jungle of buried pain and screamed hate isn’t a combination you are willing to trust your sanity to.

Still, you whisper little truths and promises in his ear and he _melts_ in your arms. He asks for a name to call you and offers his own in return (and you want to scream that name at the top of your lungs off a cliff somewhere far away, tattoo it on your brain so that you don’t forget) but you’re too proud to give away something so personal.

It’s a name you chose for yourself after running away for so long. You’re not ready to hear the sound of hope and dreams wear off it so quickly. (Others don’t seem to appreciate the hidden treasures and important monuments of life like you do.)

Something burns so brightly between the two of you. You’re not sure what it is, but he laughs and his laugh is a drug that drags you down. It’s like mud when he’s not there, when his eyes aren’t glinting so dark under the flash of neon that swings with the music. Your sweat and his, your breath and his, your soul and his. You feel like they mix into one and then do a freefall down the road of drunken mistakes and broken promises.

He smiles at you, though. His lips talk sin of the snake and his arms hold you close to him (he’s taller but seems so small for some reason) and his tongue is the forbidden fruit of the paradise you never thought you’d get to taste. Once more he whispers his own name against your hair you cave in and ask him to follow you back home, through the heated chill of the night and drunken haze of need that has settled into your flesh and bones.

It’s like floating, you think as you stumble along the moving world. But his grasp on you keeps you grounded and just _there_. You feel like you have known him for a century already ( _before_ this alternative reality) and something inside of you comes back to life and breathes rain onto the burn marks on the inside of your arms. How long had they itched like ant bites until today? You can’t recall anymore – it all was just another part of your _usual_ and normal.

You breathe for the first time in years and scream his name into the black of the night, laugh your soul out until it rattles like a newborn inside of your shell. _Eren, Erenerenerenereneren_ \----- You don’t know how long you scream your throat raw and there is blood under your fingernails. Feels like your skin is breaking anew and there is dirt falling out of the hinges that hold you together.

He holds you tight and keeps you from scratching your face raw, shushes you so gently it almost feels like the haze of a drug taken too much. You close your eyes and ask if the visions you’d seen so long ago are true. If the beatings you had taken for not being like the others are worth the things that haunted your dreams and laid fear in your thoughts and hopes. There has been blood on your hands since the day you entered this word and it has never seem right to just live (and that is a term that meant too much and covered too little) and feel the grass under your naked feet. Was it worth it, the ruined life you now had built up from wobbly and cracked brick found in dumpsters and held together with cute band-aids?

Again with the cute to make the pain less. You always do this, always run away and pretend you’re strong when it’s really you being a coward and too weak for anything else. A flawed human being, like everyone else, you suppose. Only your sins have been painted in the history of another country and world, your sins are like shackles that follow you no matter how many times you try to be reborn anew start it from scratch.

He is always the trigger. The one pill taken too many, the one drop of cough syrup too much that it makes your throat burn raw. Why does he continue to hunt you down over and over again, why does he continue to disregard the name you had chosen for yourself as a last resort of escape from the dirty deeds you’ve done and don’t even remember.

Your head is funny; a disease of kind that has a proper name and everything seems to rule over it. Nonphysical disability of sorts (and yet you detest the words and meanings forced upon you when you know that there is nothing wrong with you, really) that leaves you unfit for the society and work you were birthed for. One more cog in the system that is so foul and unreal that even the monsters in your delirious rants seem to make more sense. But that is the problem, isn’t it?

You know you’re begging for forgiveness and release and _just leave me alone already, please, have I not given enough to earn my own redemption_. He sighs and his skin against your moving lips feels like burning amber. His eyes are the color of hardened gems and you know them so well, so well and close, like a lover you had always hoped to find.

He seems hurt now, torn apart and secretly you’re glad ( _finally_ , he knows how you’ve suffered until now) that he seems more human now that before. The cute is just a mask for a monster to hide behind and maybe that was why he hadn’t numbed the pain away. But he is speaking now and you listen, think that maybe the words ( _I am not here to hurt you, but me being here does just that. Over and over no matter what I do. Captain!_ ) are somewhat true. Even if you don’t know what he is talking about.

Stop, you just want this ringing in your ears to stop. Does it matter anymore, though? No matter how much you run and hide, he still always finds you. Like a bloodhound tracking the prey he sniffs you out through the crowds of misfits and drug addicts. You are one yourself, in a way, just that your drug is different than the rest of the world’s.

It’s like giving up on everything – for good. Not as hard as you had thought it would be. You feel better already, though. Like the old you that had been always staring at you from the corners of the rooms and _judging_ with blind eyes. Can you not, you had asked once to the quiet of your room and glared where the paint had been coming off the wall. You hadn’t been able to stand the unseeing eyes repeating the same _your fault, your fault, your fault_ in muttered lost languages when you were so young and so lost. It hasn’t gotten better with time as everyone around you had promised at the very start.

Pills after pills after pills, doctors who only knew how to name off one mental disease after another and just stuff more pills down your throat – that was your life for so long. Like they helped. All they gave was a warped world that was blurry and white around the edges and the constant need to puke out everything that was inside of you (food, hate, your past and your present).

But he is here and he whispers silent apologies for turning your life into hell once again, as if he was the one who held the key to the cage of monsters living inside of you. How could he, being just a boy who had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and relied too much on the brave warrior that you used to be, so many eons ago. All that is left of you now is an empty shell that contains the backlash of the lives you had lived before.

Ah, the sky is so beautiful now. Like a calm ocean that gave birth to worlds far away, deep and black –calming in a way that nothing else could ever be. Maybe that calms you down, like the few times before when you broke down in the middle of a field and away from humans. He’s here now, his breath like frozen fire across your very being and _that’s fine_. It does exactly what pills could never do (cure you).

You laugh once more and crush the black soil between your fingers. It isn’t so bad. It really isn’t so bad and you forgive him, for whatever it is that he is asking forgiveness for. You don’t care anymore, not with your life wound and twisted and put together from broken pieces of whatever was lying around there at the time.

Maybe the shadow that follows you always will calm down now. Maybe the screams and begging from so long ago will stop now. At least quiet down a notch, if only that. He is here, after all. Free of duty to protect the world and ready to save you this time around. He hadn’t managed to do that the last time, all of the times before, actually. Let the walls fall and shatter, let the people around you call you names and shun you away from those who were thought of as pure and healthy.

You are special in your insanity.

Loved in your imperfection.

By him and him alone.


End file.
